Japan and America

Spin and substance

Should the United States be impressed by Shinzo Abe—or worried by him?

“WE HAVE restored the bonds of friendship and the trust between Japan and the United States that had been markedly damaged over the past three years.” So Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, congratulated himself after his first meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington, DC, on February 22nd. Back in Japan, politicians and the media lent their uncritical echoes to Mr Abe. They were delighted with his bold assertion that, in terms of its economic and diplomatic clout, “Japan is back”.

Yet in the United States the judgment was rather different. Mr Abe and his people, says Gerald Curtis of Columbia University in New York, played up his visit in ways to “make it seem like a meeting of historic importance.” Yet the idea that Mr Abe had rescued Japan’s alliance with America was “simply untrue”. The relationship was on a sound enough footing well before Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ousted the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from power in December.

And if the Obama administration has an issue of trust, it may be with Mr Abe himself. At a time when an alarming dispute between Japan and China over troubled islands could get out of hand, possibly even dragging in the United States, it finds him hard to read. In the past, he and fellow right-wingers in the cabinet have promoted a revisionist view of history. He is soft-peddling it now.

For the moment, spin has become a central part of Mr Abe’s strategy of putting the swagger back into Japan. The economy has long been in the doldrums. His efforts to goad the Bank of Japan into bolder measures to end deflation and his promises to boost government spending have bolstered the impression of a decisive leader. The stockmarket has risen sharply. Mr Abe’s approval ratings, according to recent opinion polls, are above 70%. That is astonishing compared with the dismal run of prime ministers who preceded him—and with Mr Abe’s disastrous first term as prime minister, in 2006-07.

The Washington summit appears to have boosted his standing further. Perhaps, says Satoru Mori of Hosei University in Tokyo, that is because Mr Abe came across as pragmatic rather than driven by ideology. He has put the economy—hardly an area of expertise—at the core of his agenda. Rising popularity has helped keep the LDP in line. Yet the concern is that the pragmatism may be only skin-deep.

Mr Abe’s scribblings published since he came to office betray an almost wilful naivety. He appears to think that Japan did very little bad in the imperial years before its utter defeat in 1945 (a view that riles Japan’s neighbours). Even weirder, Mr Abe writes as if Japan has done little good in the years since. He writes of freeing “the country called Japan” from “the grip of post-war history”.

It is not entirely clear what he means, but the chief complaint seems to be with the pacifist parts of the constitution which America foisted on the defeated country—a kind of national castration, in Mr Abe’s eyes, made worse by the perceived influence of Japanese socialists in the 1960s. Yet the fact is that Japan’s post-war pacifism has been extremely popular among its citizens. Meanwhile, American security guarantees paved the way for Japan’s unprecedented post-war growth and prosperity. Mr Abe’s adored grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi (who like Mr Abe twice served as prime minister), was a chief architect of the post-war order. Mr Abe’s LDP and its backers in business were the chief beneficiaries.

Concern that Mr Abe’s hawkishness could upset China explains why Americans were not keen he bring to Washington ideas they would normally approve of. The administration made it clear that America would not openly endorse Mr Abe’s desire to reinterpret the constitution in ways that give Japan the right to collective self-defence—for instance, the ability to come to the aid of the United States in the event of an attack. Nor did Mr Obama or his new secretary of state, John Kerry, offer as strong a pledge as did Mr Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, to defend Japan’s administration of the Senkaku islands disputed by China (which calls them the Diaoyu islands). Mr Kerry merely reconfirmed that America’s security treaty with Japan covers the islands.

Rather, the White House designed the meetings to elicit two other commitments. Choosing his words carefully, Mr Abe promised that Japan would enter trade negotiations to join the American-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—though he offered no promise to eliminate tariffs of up to 777.7% on rice. The LDP has long said it would not enter TPP talks without safeguards. Secondly, Mr Abe told Mr Obama he would take “concrete action” towards relocating Futenma, a base for American marines on the island of Okinawa. The base issue disrupted relations for a period after the DPJ came to office in 2009.

Both of Mr Abe’s promises are bold. Okinawans, who voted overwhelmingly for the LDP in the December general election, are staunchly opposed to the idea of moving the base to a less populated part of the island. They want the Americans to leave Okinawa altogether.

Meanwhile, three-fifths of LDP parliamentarians oppose membership of the TPP. Those facing re-election when the country votes for a new upper house of the Diet (parliament) in July fear a backlash from Japan’s protectionist farming lobby. It is understandable that trade experts in America and other countries aspiring to join the TPP worry that Japan joining the negotiations will delay a deal. One without Japan was in the offing for later this year; a deal with Japan might take two more years’ negotiations, at best.

Keeping up the surprises

To stay popular and keep his party behind him, Mr Abe needs to reassure voters that the economy remains his highest priority. After his return from Washington, he pulled out some surprises. On February 28th the government nominated Haruhiko Kuroda, head of the Asian Development Bank, to be the next governor of the Bank of Japan. Both he and one of the two newly named deputy governors, Kikuo Iwata, are advocates of the “unlimited monetary easing” that Mr Abe favours in order for the country to hit a new inflation target of 2%. Their appointments are akin to a hostile takeover of the central bank, a conservative bastion that has long had mixed feelings about the merits of unorthodox monetary policies it pioneered.

Mr Abe also won support in the opposition-dominated upper house for a supplementary budget worth {Yen}13.1 trillion ($140.7 billion). When it passed by a single vote, a cheer went up for the prime minister. It sends the message that he can get things done, and augurs well for the LDP in July’s upper-house elections.

The prospect of an LDP victory, and Mr Abe’s control of both houses, may break a logjam in Japanese politics, enabling Mr Abe to promote deep-rooted structural reforms. But if it emboldens him to contemplate full-scale constitutional revision, or if he qualifies or even reverses Japanese acknowledgments of wartime atrocities, it will further worsen relations between Japan and China. That is what concerns the United States above all.